Following in the augmented reality footsteps of Pokémon GO, Universal Studios has decided to give us an AR version of Jurassic World. The new game is called "Jurassic World Alive," and while the trailer for the game doesn't show any actual gameplay, the cinematic approach to ...more
Multitasking on a smartphone has never been better, but it still has some ways to go to compete with a desktop experience. Samsung hopes to change that with a new multitasking view on the Galaxy S9, which allows the user to open notifications in a new, smaller window on top of ...more
The latest portal demo made with Apple's ARKit is one small step for man, one giant leap for augmented reality. That's right, the latest demo allows you to venture through a door onto a moon from wherever you are. Mohammed Bader, senior game developer at Gamified Labs in Kuwa ...more
Move over, Spike Jonze; Microsoft has published a mixed reality music video featuring holograms of Reggie Watts filmed through a HoloLens. With HoloLens, the user in the video places various holograms of the musician and trippy visual effects on location. The images run the s ...more
The mysterious Magic Leap just partnered up with Lucasfilm's ILM xLAB to bring Star Wars to their mixed reality headsets. Based on the video demo making its way around the internet, it looks pretty impressive. Video: . We don't know much about Magic Leap and what form its head ...more
Every year, tech companies use April 1st as a means to prove that they have a sense of humor. Sometimes their jokes are good for a chuckle, other times the gags backfire disastrously. For the most part, however, we'd be better off without the bulk of these annual antics. But ...more
As obtrusive as they come, the translucent volume control window that appears in iOS 7 takes up a lot of screen real estate. It's extremely annoying when watching videos, appearing directly in the middle of the movie you're viewing for several seconds any time you adjust the a ...more
Trying to figure out which music streaming service to subscribe to can be a difficult task when the playing field is so crowded. Each has its benefits, as well as downsides, so finding the right one for your needs and wants can take a lot of overwhelming research. But we've do ...more
Need a unique gift idea for the techy person in your life? Look no further than that phone they always have in their hand. There are plenty of great accessories, apps, subscriptions, and other smartphone-related goodies that will improve their quality of life, and thoughtful g ...more
By now, you've probably been inundated with enough Baby Yoda memes to last you a lifetime. But if you don't have the new Disney Plus streaming service on your TV, you're probably wondering where all this is coming from. Well, lucky for you, just in time for the holiday season, ...more
What does mainstream augmented reality look like? I'm not talking about the stuff you see in concept videos and science fiction films. No. What does it really look like? If you ask anyone working within the AR space today, the future of AR is wherever the immediately realizab ...more
The OnePlus 6T is easily one of 2018's best value phones for many reasons, especially when it comes to rooting and modding. But like many new phones, it's plagued with the single bottom-firing speaker that left us wanting more in the sound department. The speaker is decent on ...more
After spending a good portion of 2017 teasing us with images and bits of news, Lenovo, in a partnership with Disney and Lucasfilm, has finally released its Mirage AR headset along with the Star Wars: Jedi Challenge game collection. Let me preface this hands-on experience by l ...more
So while it is the weekend of San Diego Comic-Con, and it should not be a complete surprise — without a word of warning hitting my feed — the trailer for the upcoming film, Ready Player One was released today. And wow it looks amazing. So, you have no idea what I am talking a ...more
And so it begins... CES 2017 is upon us! This is a very exciting time for those who are looking out for the newest innovations and releases from the world of technology. I said this was going to be a fun week, and here we start it with a bang from smartglasses developer Osterh ...more
As we all use our smartphones for more and more things, we constantly want to share and view those items on a larger screen, especially when it comes to media. While phones like the Samsung Galaxy Note 2 and tablets like the iPad do make watching Netflix on a portable device p ...more
One of the benefits of Blu-ray and DVD is the ability to share discs with friends and family without any hassle. Want to show off your favorite movie? Just lend them your copy. A digital movie isn't so kind, as it's typically locked to the account that purchased it. But now th ...more
Choosing a movie to watch at home can be incredibly difficult when you don't already have one in mind. But there's a shortcut for your iPhone that can make it easier to browse your streaming media services for something good to play. More specifically, it lets you browse Netfl ...more
Dark mode themes for mobile apps are all the rage these days, but YouTube is taking that a bit literally with its latest augmented reality experience. On Monday, to promote the release of Maleficent: Mistress of Evil, which debuts in US theaters on Friday, Disney released a v ...more
The long tease that is the release of Minecraft Earth continues, this time with an opportunity to start playing what might be one of the hottest augmented reality games ever, before the general public. As promised back in May, Microsoft has opened up its closed beta program f ...more
If you have a modern iPhone, you have an excellent video recorder at your disposal. Every iPhone since the 6S has the ability to shoot in 4K resolution, and each new iteration has brought new capabilities to the table. But even the best mobile shooter can use a little extra he ...more
Spring is here across the US, but, through the lens of Snapchat and augmented reality, winter is coming to New York. After debuting a Game of Thrones AR experience at SXSW, HBO has now taken advantage of Snapchat's new Landmarker technology to promote the forthcoming final se ...more
The great thing about augmented reality is that so much is possible using the emerging tools and software, your only real limit is your imagination — that includes making real versions of imagined products. We're not sure where the idea for the new Posemoji app came from, but ...more
Hollywood loves sequels so much that studios and their marketing teams are not too proud to release a sequel of an augmented reality promotion. After webbing up a web-based augmented reality experience to promote the theatrical release of Spider-man: Into the Spider-verse, So ...more
The hype for HBO's Game of Thrones reached proportions as epic as the series itself this week with the latest release of the final season's official trailer, but it's a Snapchat promotion that will truly make fans at SXSW bend the knee. Using what Snapchat calls AR Marker Tec ...more
Every now and then, Hollywood has a moment where two (or more) movies arrive at around the same time, most recently with the release of dueling Fyre Festival documentaries. Augmented reality is having a similar moment right now, with Google's Arts & Culture department publish ...more
In 2019, Sony is mixing up its design, attempting to stand out among the sea of familiarity. Instead of emulating Samsung with punch hole cameras, they decided to target a rare section of the market, content consumers. There's the Xperia 1 for those who want the best, and the ...more
In the past few years, augmented reality software maker 8th Wall has worked to build its platform into a cross-platform augmented reality toolkit for mobile apps, as well as web-based AR experiences. Now, the company founded by former engineers from Facebook and Google is mak ...more
Apple's in-house music identification app Shazam has been quiet on the augmented reality front since officially joining Cupertino's finest last year, but a new promotion gives AR enthusiasts an occasion to raise a toast. Last week, Shackleton Whisky launched an augmented real ...more
Despite less than glowing reviews from critics, the latest installment from the Harry Potter spinoff movie series, Fantastic Beasts: The Crimes of Grindelwald, is winning at the box office. Now, to help build on its holiday momentum, the film is getting another promotional as ...more
Have you ever wondered what it would be like to try to survive The Purge as depicted in the popular movie series? Well, thanks to augmented reality, now you can. After four films, the dystopian horror The Purge is jumping to the small screen on USA Networks as a television se ...more
On Friday, the release date for her new album, Queen, Nicki Minaj is already grabbing headlines for the track "Barbie Dreams," where she disses Drake and a host of other rappers. It's a bit ironic that she's got beef with Champagne Papi, because both performers have now dropp ...more
Now even muggles can see how they'd look chasing the Golden Snitch on a Nimbus 2000. That's because Snapchat is gifting Harry Potter fans with a 3D Bitmoji Lens that adorns their digital doppelgängers in the robes of the houses of Hogwarts. To cast this AR spell with your Sn ...more
Pixar's Incredibles 2 has entered the fray as the latest sequel in a summer of highly anticipated follow-up films and, like its peers, it also has an augmented reality experience to promote its presence in theaters. Available via Snapchat, the AR experience places the familia ...more
The company behind Japan's beloved Gozilla, Japan's Toho Studios, has for years tried to give fans the sense of what a giant, nuclear-powered lizard invading Tokyo might feel like. Until now, those attempts have been limited to the movie theater, but now, with the help of the ...more
While Hulu offers users an easy way to catch up on the latest shows, it hasn't always given them the best tools to control that content. Scrubbing — or fast-forwarding and rewinding — had a history of inaccuracy, as well as a general uselessness. Luckily, Hulu has greatly impr ...more
If you're someone who shares your Hulu account with friends and family, let me be first to acknowledge you as a hero. That being said, heroes have messy profiles — your account quickly reflects the viewing habits of your shared users, making it difficult to keep your watch his ...more
Hulu has a lot of content — with thousands of movies and TV series, there's bound to be a few titles here and there you simply don't like. If Hulu is inexplicably recommending garbage you don't want to watch, there's a new way to stop that from happening. Announced on May 17, ...more
Like Marvel's Avengers, Facebook's Camera AR platform now has a number of new AR superpowers at its disposal, so it is fitting that Earth's Mightiest Heroes have the distinction of displaying them. Available now in via Facebook on iOS and Android, the Avengers: Infinity War A ...more
HBO is only a couple of episodes into the second season of Westworld, the television version of the classic science fiction movie about a robot resort gone awry, and the fan theories about the show are already reaching Season 1 levels of weirdness. But while you were obsessed ...more
The augmented reality and VR arm of Verizon, Envrmnt, wants to make it really easy for anyone to create AR apps. AR Designer is a web-based tool with a drag-and-drop interface that enables non-developers to import 3D assets, build ARKit and ARCore apps, and publish them to th ...more
Given Dwayne "The Rock" Johnson's blockbuster movie pedigree and the promotional power that usually accompanies his work, there's a certain predictable symmetry in the news that Rampage, a movie adaptation of the classic arcade game, has now become an augmented reality mobile ...more
Despite the wide availability of markerless augmented reality experiences for mobile devices, there is still a market for scanned triggers for content, as evidenced by the new image recognition capabilities on Facebook's Camera AR platform. AR experiences for the movies Ready ...more
Master director Steven Spielberg's virtual reality epic Ready Player One is coming to theaters in just a few weeks, but you can get an early look at some of the best parts the latest trailer, "Come With Me," which was revealed on Thursday. But while the film is supposed to be ...more
Soon, kids young and old aspiring to imitate Iron Man will only need to learn how to duplicate Tony Stark's snarky wit, because Hasbro will now supply the augmented reality helmet. This spring, just in time for Avengers: Infinity War, the latest installment of Marvel's cinema ...more
Scary movies seem to be a natural fit for augmented reality experiences, with the latest example coming from the Insidious film franchise. To promote the latest installment, Insidious: The Last Key, Sony Pictures has possessed the BeautyPlus (iOS | Android) and MakeupPlus (iO ...more
Augmented reality developers are rapidly bringing science fiction tropes into the real world, with the latest example leveraging the TrueDepth camera on the iPhone X to emulate the cloaking technology made famous by movies like Predator and Marvel's The Avengers. Japanese dev ...more
Apple's codec for photos and videos in iOS 11, HEVC (High-Efficiency Video Coding), as well as the container, HEIF (High-Efficiency Image File Format), result in a reduction in size for pictures and movies without sacrificing quality. Seems like a win-win situation, but Window ...more
Usually paper beats rock. With augmented reality, The Rock beats paper. Using the Life VR app for iOS or Android, Entertainment Weekly readers can point their smartphones at the cover of the Dec. 8 edition to view a holiday greeting from Dwayne "The Rock" Johnson, star of the ...more
To create a destination for coffee connoisseurs, Starbucks has ordered up a venti cup of augmented reality to make the visit more interactive. The company's new Reserve Roastery in Shanghai, the second such location of its kind in the world, will be the first Starbucks locati ...more
If you're like me, you probably have a wishlist of Android games you'd love to buy, except the high price tags keep you away. A few bucks can feel like a fortune in the Google Play Store — you just can't bring yourself to pay that much. Well, lucky for you, Google Play has som ...more
Snapchat's popular AR lenses just got a lot more useful for businesses, as the company has now opened its Context Cards platform to sponsored content. Launched last month, Context Cards give Snapchat users relevant information about the snaps that they view. For example, snap ...more
Facebook's camera platform is the augmented reality vehicle of choice to promote the latest musical effort from Taylor Swift. T-Swift's new album, Reputation, dropped today. To get her fans psyched, an AR effect electrifies the user with virtual lightning, while a snippet from ...more
HDR, or high-dynamic range, is currently the best way to view movies and TV shows on your iPhone 8 or 8 Plus. With a wider color gamut and a broad luminance range, there's no beating HDR video for the ultimate viewing experience. Unless, of course, you don't have the storage t ...more
At the risk of breaking a few rules, we're going to talk about Fight Club. More specifically, digital artist Mateusz "Marpi" Marcinowski has mimicked a scene from the movie using Apple's ARKit. In the "IKEA Nesting Instinct" scene, while the narrator ruminates about his consu ...more
Your Apple TV is just that — your Apple TV, which means you probably want to personalize it a bit, to make yours stand out from everybody else's. And the easiest way to do this is by renaming it. If you live in an apartment building, this will help differentiate your Apple TV ...more
Augmented reality has an incredible way of integrating things into our world that we can typically only see in movies like ghosts in a haunted house or Sharknados. However, a new experiment made with Apple's ARKit has changed the game in realistic augmented reality characters. ...more
If you have movies and videos stored on Box, Google Drive, Dropbox, or OneDrive, you should definitely be using the VLC app for iPhone. After setting a few things up, VLC will let you stream videos directly from any of these services with a proper video player UI, complete wit ...more
After laying off 40% of its staff this month to cut costs, SoundCloud appears to be struggling to stay afloat. While blog posts from the company have assured fans that the music platform is not in danger of shutting down, some people aren't so sure this is the truth. Internet ...more
The Force is strong with Lenovo, who is working with Disney and Lucasfilm to deliver an augmented reality headset and lightsaber handle for the forthcoming Star Wars: Jedi Challenges game. The headset and game were revealed at the D23 Expo, which is ongoing at the Anaheim Con ...more